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Maximus the Puppy

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen me talking about the new game that Maximus has been playing. He pretends he’s a puppy. He gets down on all fours and crawls around the house panting. Tongue out and full-out panting. He crawls up to you and wants you to pet his head. If you don’t call him a puppy while you pet him, he corrects you. “Puppy!” pant, pant, pant. Bryan does not love this game. In fact, he doesn’t get it at all. I had the pleasure of staying home with him a few days last week so I saw the puppy act quite a few times.

Sometimes he whines that the sliding door isn’t open {because the air is on!} and he can’t be a puppy going from inside the house to outside the house. I suppose it makes sense, he’s always opening the door for the real dog to go outside or come back in.

I’m proud to tell you that I used this puppy game to my advantage one afternoon. He needed a diaper change but didn’t want to stop playing with his toys. I thought he’d follow me into his room but he wasn’t falling for it. I got into his room and called, “here puppy!” Next thing I knew, I heard the panting coming down the hall. He crawled into his room while trying to grin and pant. I picked him up and told him, “good, puppy!” Then we changed his diaper with no fuss. I call that rock star parenting! 😉 Or adapting to what works…

There are two things that amaze me about this puppy game. 1. It’s the first sign of imagination play that we’ve seen. 2. He remembers it from day-to-day or sometimes later in the week.